Technical Field
The embodiments herein generally relates to a networked platform for creating and managing communities and particularly relates to a method and system for automatically creating a community of users having similar interests, based on the user attributes through a mobile device.
Description of the Related Art
Mobile devices have become ubiquitous in today's society. Many people use mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptops, tablet devices or any smart device to plan their daily lives. These devices grant people the opportunity to connect with others in ways not possible before.
However, despite the advances in technology, connecting with others who share common interests remains difficult. A user must first locate one or more other people who share common interests. The user device will not be able to do of its own, or to help the user in any significant way. The user then needs to search online services for groups sharing the same interests. Even if the user manages to somehow find a group of people who shares common interests, interacting with the group is difficult with conventional technology. These groups are generally limited to interacting via fixed landline devices, over the Internet, with limited access to information with their community in a mobile context. This prevents a user from making full use of the advantages offered by mobile networks and associated mobile devices.
Present technology also presents difficulties for people wishing to interact across platforms. Applications running on mobile devices, personal computers, or Internet protocol enabled entertainment devices (such as IP-enabled digital video recorders) operate using different platforms and protocols. It is difficult for a user using one platform or application to interact with other users or other applications on different platforms. Also, conventional methods do not permit a user to interact seamlessly with others users across a network.
One of the existing prior arts provides a method of creating communities based on the user-attributes. The communities are created by taking input such as document, user-interest keywords etc from the users. Thus the prior art creates a virtual online community of likeminded people but does not discuss about automatically identifying user attributes through the mobile device. The prior art also does not provide notifications about matching communities to the user.
Another prior art provides a system and method for defining eligibility criteria for online communities and also notifying the user whenever they meet or match the criteria. But again, the prior art does not discusses about automatically identifying the attributes based on the location and usage of the mobile device by the user.
Another prior art provides a system and method for integrating online promotions/campaigns with social networks. More specifically, it enables organizations to run promotions that are integrated with the viral features of social networks. The social network-based platform provides viral features, such as the invite friends feature, newsfeeds, mini-feeds, notifications, requests, and an indication of a user's selected applications on the user's social network profile page that advertise and spread the word about the promotion and the organization. But again, the prior art does not discusses about virtual platform for providing different kinds of offers pertaining to a particular merchant at a particular location, number of users active at any moment of time and activities going on at that particular location.
Hence, there is a need for a method and system for creating communities by identifying common attributes between a plurality of people. There is also a need for a method and system for creating a community based on the location and identified attributes of the user through a mobile device. Further there is a need for a method and system for creating a virtual platform for providing interactive information sharing among the users.
The abovementioned shortcomings, disadvantages and problems are addressed herein and which will be understood by reading and studying the following specification.